


Stages Of

by RecreationalSunshine (SwashbuckLore)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angry Natasha Romanov, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asgard (Marvel), Avengers Tower, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Explicit Language, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Hydra (Marvel), Injury, M/M, New York City, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Alternating, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Recovery, Steve Rogers Feels, Super Soldier Serum, The Avengers Are Good Bros
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 11:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16974018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwashbuckLore/pseuds/RecreationalSunshine
Summary: [One Shot split into two chapters.]In the aftermath of Captain Americ: The Winter Soldier, Steve finds Buck.The original Avengers watch Steve grieve. Denial - Tony. Anger - Natasha. Bargaining - Bruce. Depression - Clint. Acceptance- Thor.





	Stages Of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZepysGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZepysGirl/gifts).



> This is another oneshot for a friend and fellow fans. I split it into two chapters because that's what it needed. Second chapter will come up before Dec. 17, I promise. Have fun in my sandbox within a sandbox :)

DENIAL:

Tony was in a ragingly productive mood. He had had so. many. ideas. during Bruce’s rut and now he could get started on them. Don’t get him wrong: he loved sex; it was great. But he really loved the endorphin rush that led to boosted creativity. While Bruce had dozed between orgasms, he’d quietly had JARVIS take notes on his ideas, and now it was time to work away!

The second he entered his lab, though, he knew something was wrong. It was almost pitch black in there; his senses snapped into focus, and he could scent injury. Fear, hurt, resignation and other negative omega emotions filled the air, and he could hear two sets of unsteady breathing.

“Tony? It’s me, it’s Steve.” A voice broke through the dark. “Don’t turn up the lights unless -”

“JARVIS, turn up the lights.” Tony ordered. The lights flared to life, revealing not one but two super soldiers in his lab. Steve’s suit was in terrible shape, but the guy crumpled on Tony’s table (it was clean; Pepper must have been in here. Only way it’d be empty enough to hold a fully grown man.) was in worse shape. Unconscious, in black Kevlar, dripping blood.

“-you can stay calm.”

“Jesus, Steve, why isn’t he in a hospital?”

“How much do you know about the field of medicine?”

“I studied it after this.” He tapped his arc reactor. “Not much, though. I’m not a doctor-” he stopped as he got a good look at the fellow on the table. “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, is that The fucking Winter Soldier in my fucking lab? Holy fuck, JARVIS, suit, NOW.” 

Steve stepped in between the Winter Soldier and Tony - putting his back to the Soldier! - and snapped. “Anthony!” Tony paused, partially because How Dare Steve, and partially because he noticed that the beta’s hand had come up to clutch at a bandage over his belly.

“His name is James Buchanan Barnes, and he’s not going to hurt you.”

“He’s the guy that killed Nicholas Fury!” Tony said, feeling the urge to laugh a little hysterically. Steve was also bleeding. He’d probably been shot by The Winter Soldier, too. “Killed the unkillable. Fury is dead, Steve, because of - Wait. Barnes? You think - you believe this is your assbuddy from way back when? Holy mother of God, you need your head looked at. Right now, we -” He’d lost too much blood, he couldn’t think straight -

“Run facial recognition.” Steve snapped. It couldn’t be pheromones that were doing this to Steve, he was a beta, he didn’t have ruts.

“No! Denial. We’re getting him in a Hulk-proof cell then we’re getting you some anti-delusion pills. And a team of doctors” Tony pointed at Steve. “Now, c’mon, come away from the crazy murderous assassin who isn’t your BF- ”

Steve’s jaw clenched. “JARVIS, run facial recognition.”

JARVIS pulled up a picture of Bucky Barnes on the nearest screen, then a blue light ran over The Winter Soldier’s face. Tony normally would have bitched about the betrayal, but right now he was too busy running through the ‘How To Influence People’ section in his head. Money wouldn’t work, Cap was too pure. Common sense wasn’t working. Iron Man threats might work. Double Dog Dare only worked on Clint. Maybe blackmail? 

“Sir, the omega known as James Buchanan Barnes is lying on the table Ms. Potts organized.” JARVIS intoned.

ANGER:

Natasha was beyond pissed. She didn’t even bother with knocking before she entered the Avengers Tower medical ward room where a top team of doctors were tending to Steve. “What the hell were you trying to do?”

“I was saving my best friend.” Steve replied. He was sitting on the bed shirtless, and his chest was sliced up, burnt, and bruised beyond belief. He had a gunshot wound in his gut again. 

“You took on an entire HYDRA base at the side of an unstable omega who shot you when he was finished.” She didn’t bother to keep up her untouchable exterior. She was furious, and Steve might get what she was saying if he actually saw how utterly done she was with this bullshit.

“I did what I had to.” He tried.

“You did what you wanted to. You could have died, Steven Grant Rogers.” Nat hissed, standing behind the doc. Her fists were clenched and trembling, and she radiated terrified rage. “I told you Sam and I were on our way, we would have been there in 24 hours, but you - you goddamn imbecile -”

“Natasha.” Steve sighed, his face twisting with pain. “Bucky wasn’t waiting. He was going to take on the entire HYDRA outpost by himself. Alone.”

“So you should have tranq’ed him! I gave you a dart gun. I risked my neck to find out his code words. You could have yelled the one that would have brought him straight back to you.” She growled. “Your one and only option wasn’t to charge in after him.”

“I’m not HYDRA.” Steve snapped. “I’m not going to use his commands. Bucky’s not a machine, Natasha.” 

“He is The Asset.” She spat. “He is not your friend. He is not your ally. He isn’t even Bucky after seventy years of brainwashing and torture.” When Steve rocked back, she reigned herself in. “This is the fourth time he’s put you in a hospital in six months. He doesn’t even remember you, and he isn’t going to. I am sorry, Steve, but they ripped him to shreds to the point that he’s not coming back. So you can’t keep trying to get yourself killed!”

“I am dead without him!” Steve yelled. The medical ward went silent. Steve took a deep, shaky breath, and hissed out. “Why do you think I put the plane in the water 70 years ago? He is my other half.”

“You’ve lived just fine since 2012.” Natasha barked, jerking away from a member of the staff who was trying to get her to back down. 

“If you believe that, Natasha, you don’t know a damn thing about me.” Steve snapped.

She stabbed a finger at him, and snarled in her Alpha voice: “Stop it. You are a beta, Steve. You don’t come with the soul-bond. You don’t need him to be alive. He doesn’t need you at all. Give the fuck up.”

BARGAINING:

Bruce looked up from the file Steve had given him. “Steve, this is permanent.”

“The brainwashing has to be reversible.” Steve argued. “If you’ll study on your end, I’ll get the intel from HYDRA. I’ll do whatever I -”

“Steve.” Bruce felt exhausted. He’d just finished his rut without once turning into The Other Guy - which was almost impossible - and he just wanted to sleep for another day. “His brain got frozen and fried. Sections were burnt out of it. Behaviors and control phrases were tortured into him while personhood and personality were tortured out of him.” Steve waited for him to finish before he said, firmly: 

“There’s a way to save him. We just have to try something new. If you figure out the rest of the code words and start researching how to deprogram them, I can start trying to reintroduce memories to him. He remembers me. I’ve seen it. I can find some of the scents that might signal home to him. We can bring back his true self.”

“And if we can’t?” Bruce asked. This was heart wrenching to watch, to see Steve trying to come up with anything to do, any kind of trade to bring his best friend and desired mate back.

“I’ll do anything to bring him back. I won’t stop until he’s recovered.” Steve said. 

“And if he doesn’t ever?” Bruce pushed.

Steve looked directly into Dr. Banner’s tired face. “There is something out there.” He said, then added so very, very quietly. “I’ll sell my soul if that’s what it takes.” 

DEPRESSION:

Clint found him in the gym at 3 a.m.

Steve, his soaked white tank top revealing the bandages around his midriff and dark but fading bruises and cuts up and down his chest and shoulders, was going at it. The Captain-America-proof punching bag that Tony had built creaked horrifically under one punch, and then it burst, sand rushing out, spraying onto and around Steve.

Steve stared at the broken bag for a moment, then he dropped to his knees. The sand continued to fall around him, but Steve curled up on himself and didn’t move. He looked young and alone, a beta who had faced the worst of the world and come back without a waver, but the journey had cost him a terrible price. A man out of time. Without the one and only thing he’d ever begged the universe for. He looked broken.

Clint couldn’t ignore this, couldn’t in good conscious keep crawling through the air conditioning on his way to booby trap Tony’s lab. He threaded a finger through the vent, then pushed it out. It stayed on his finger but came out of its slot. He turned it sideways and stored it in the vent, then fastened a loop of rope to the ceiling and slid down it - all of this in near silence. 

“Hey, Grant.” Clint was using people’s middle names this week. Mostly because he was a spy and he knew all their middle names and he did what he wanted.

“Barton.” Steve mumbled.

“How are you?” 

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Clint sat criss-cross in the circle of sand, careless of the gentle trickle of sand that drifted into his hair and across his shoulders. “That’s kinda a lie, dude. What’s going on?”

Steve was silent a long, long time before the words began trickling out. “All my life, people have told me Bucky needed a real Alpha, that he was wasting his time on a beta that’d be better off dead.” He continued, a little louder, a little faster: “Every time he went into heat, I couldn’t give him what he needed. I did my best. That’s what fisting is for, isn’t it?” Steve laughed like cut glass. “But I wasn’t what he really needed. And I can’t give him what he needs now.”

“Grant …”

“I’m exhausted by my worthlessness. I couldn’t save him overseas. I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t enough.” Steve said numbly. Tears were sliding down his cheeks. Clint had never seen Steve cry. His face didn’t change, his voice didn’t shift. The tears simply filled his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. It was like cracks rushing across a sheet of ice in slow motion. “All my life, Bucky’s saved me. Even when I was nothing, he thought I was important enough to go after. And now, Bucky’s in the deepest fight he’s ever been in, and I’m useless again, I’m even more useless than that little guy in Brooklyn was. Even Nat thinks I’m useless. I can’t save him. I’m not enough.” Steve whispered jaggedly.

“Steve.” Clint interrupted. “First off, Tasha was terrified that one of the people she’s let into her heart of hearts or something was going to die. There was a miscommunication about who was dripping blood all over the place. She gets beyond pissed when she’s terrified, and she gets touchy when people go after second chances for assassins. You put coke and mentos together and you should expect an explosion. Second off, fight the system. Fuck the system. I’m a beta, and people tell Tasha she should get an omega all the time.”

“You’re a beta?”

“Yeah. I don’t advertise it, but I am.” He leaned forward. “So what if we’re betas? So what if we’re the middle ground? So what that you don’t have a physical soul-bond with Bucky? If he’s yours, you don’t say you’re not enough. That’s a lie. Feel what you need to feel, but don’t you dare quit because of a lie. It’s gonna be a shitfest, but it’s for your Bucky. I’ve been where you are. Kinda. You’re not useless, ever. It’s not what you are that matters right now. It’s who you are. And you’re enough.”

ACCEPTANCE:

Thor walked beside the Captain, considerate of the pain pulsing around the beta. Beta’s scents were far, far more discreet than the overwhelming olfactory assault that rolled off of alphas and omegas, but Thor was blessed with an excellent olfactor. 

“And you are sure of my offer?” he checked with Captain Rogers. 

Steve’s scent ached with longing already, but he nodded sharply. “If it will save Bucky, I can let him go.” He looked up at Thor, leaving the rest of the sentiment unspoken: Just bring him back. “I can’t save him alone. But I don’t have to.”

“We are your friends.” Thor said. “And comrades-in-arms. Our life is yours and yours is ours.”

“The omega you’re taking to Asguard to heal used to be my comrade-in-arms.” Captain Rogers was quiet for a step.

“I will bring your wandering mind-injured mate back to you whole.” Thor promised. “The journey to recovery is not an easy one, but with such a light shining in the threshold for him to return to, surely he will recover, and recover well.”

“He isn’t mine.” Captain Rogers admitted. “We were promised to each other as mates, but it was illegal for a beta to marry an omega in my time.”

“Foolishness.” Thor scowled.

“I agree.” Captain Rogers stopped in front of the glass window. He stood at attention, his scent poignant, bittersweet

Outside, sedated, Bucky lay on a stretcher. After a week in their equivalent of the dungeons - during which he had gotten medical care, courtesy of Lady Natasha using disputed magical phrases - he looked a little less like hell. 

Thor walked out of the building, his stride sure, his voice confident as he lay a hand on Bucky’s stretcher and called to Heimdall. His last glimpse of Steve was the man pressing a palm to the window, mouthing the phrase: “End of the line.”


End file.
